Rothesay council is taking steps to prevent ice fishing shelters from ending up in the Kennebecasis River again.
Several shelters ended up going through the ice at Renforth Wharf following a sudden thaw event in late February.
Council voted this week to create a working group to “discuss the future of ice fishing at Renforth Wharf” as it relates to safety, pollution, regulatory monitoring, and enforcement.
Mayor Nancy Grant said she wants to see ice fishing continue there, but what happened this winter cannot happen again.
“This year was rather a sad story of unretrieved shacks and a lot of debris on the ice, more than I’ve ever seen in my time as mayor,” Grant said at the meeting.
Grant said as many as three wooden structures went into the water, and the town will need to hire divers to assess the situation.
But the mayor said the town is limited in what it can do as ice fishing is regulated by the provincial departments of environment, as well as justice and public safety.
“In recent years, they have done very little in the way of enforcing the rules on the sign that they raise, but I think we have to do something,” she said.
The working group will include town councillors, ice fishers, residents, police, fire, and provincial representatives.
Deputy Mayor Matt Alexander said he would like to see ice fishing continue, nothing the river is one of the town’s greatest assets.
“There just happens to be a very, very, very small population of people that choose not to clean up after themselves and to make others look bad,” said Alexander.
Coun. Bill McGuire said he has never seen a situation where one day a car could drive out to the middle of the river and the next day there was no ice at all.
But McGuire said the status quo is not acceptable and everyone needs to work together to come up with some solutions.
Coun. Peter Lewis said one thing he would like the group to look at is possibly eliminating wooden structures on the ice.
“They have all those pop-up tents now. They’re nice, they’re insulated, they’re warm,” said Lewis.
“I don’t really see a need for wooden buildings down there that we can’t retrieve off the ice when we have conditions change within 12 hours.”
